Humanist

I watched a video clip that was posted by Daily Monitor on its Twitter space @DailyMonitor. It was of representatives of eleven families reacting to a High Court ruling granting Dr. Apollo Kagwa Lutakome “an interim order stopping the eleven families from carrying out activities like farming, building or any other development on the disputed land in Kakunyu, Namusera, Wakiso District.”

As the affected families expressed their dissatisfaction with the ruling, they kept pointing out that their ancestors were the legitimate bibanja owners (tenants) of the land and which land ownership passed down to them. The evidence they adduce was their ancestral burial grounds are on said land. The graves of loved ones are on it.

I am assuming Dr. Lutakome is the mailo land owner and who may be wanting the tenants off his land so as he may use it himself and or sell it off to a developer. Whatever the case, this raises the question of development versus the graves and resting places of our ancestors. What value does ‘development’ attached to our ancestors’ graves. It would appear very little, if at all.

Which necessitates for us all to ponder the question: “Have you decided on how your “soulless body” should be handled when you die?” Increasingly, especially in the central region, development is arriving significant disregard of the graves of our ancestors and their resting places.

Recently, I was at a workshop in an urban centre that was originally not one, but development has since arrived. Through the widow of the hotel that we were meeting, I saw these two graves, which I have assumed were husband and wife. It broke my heart, the squalid place that their resting place has become co-existing side by side with a powerful hotel.

It is quite likely, time will soon come where the graves will either be dug up and the remains reburied, if their lucky. It would appear there isn’t a clear law or policy on when ‘development’ comes what its responsibility and duty it has to the owners of land resting on it for what they thought would be in peace for eternity.

For us all, it is time to ponder the question of what we may consider the final resting place and what tangible markers that our descendants will have that we once lived on this earth. Time is now to engage the questions:

• What duty do we have in protecting and preserving the final resting places of our ancestors gone by?
• Are we exercising that duty?
• Has the time come for the end of burial grounds and concrete graves?
• Should we now begin to consider cremation and tree pod burials?

Food for thought. And action we must take lest we attract the ire of the spirits of our ancestors.